International
The sale of hijabs skyrockets in Iran due to the fear of the ‘Police of morality’
The veil seller Mahshid is doing well. The sale of hijabs has skyrocketed in his store in northern Tehran since the return to the streets of the ‘Police of Morals’ to reimpose the use of Islamic clothing, a situation that other businesses in the sector are also experiencing.
Numerous women look and touch veils, ask for prices and several wear clothes at the Mahshid store located in Tajrish Square, a business that sank after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022 after being arrested for not wearing the hijab well.
“Many women stopped shopping and wearing the veil then. Sales were reduced to less than half,” he tells EFE Mahshid, who at 34 years old has had covered hair and has been selling hijabs for a decade.
“But with the return of the ‘Police of Morals’ to the streets, sales have recovered,” says this merchant who sells veils from 1,350,000 rials (2.5 euros) and has them in all colors and prints.
Sales have not fully recovered and Mahshid now dispatches 75% of what he sold before the death of the 22-year-old Kurdish girl, which provoked unprecedented protests against the Islamic Republic in which 500 protesters died in state violence.
After Amini’s death, many Iranians stopped wearing the Islamic veil as a gesture of social disobedience to a political system that they consider oppressive and discriminatory, especially against women.
To reimpose the use of the veil, the Iranian authorities launched a campaign of massive repression with the confiscation of vehicles, prison sentences and even lashes, Amnesty International denounced.
In vain. Many Iranians have continued without covering their hair and that is why in mid-April the authorities deployed the ‘Moral Police’ back on the streets of the country and since then arrests women who do not wear a veil, a mandatory garment in the country since 1983.
Afshin, a veil seller in a shopping center in northern Tehran, has also seen a significant increase in sales and believes that it is because of the fear of the dreaded police vans in which they put women sometimes forcibly discovered.
“Sales have improved in the last three months and I think it is due to the fear that many women feel about the violent arrests of girls who do not wear the veil,” this 36-year-old Iranian tells EFE.
Afshin sold 50 veils on weekdays and about 100 on holidays until Amini’s death in September 2022, after which sales fell to about 50 pieces per week.
“Now he has recovered a little. It’s not like three years ago, but we sell about 30 veils a day,” he explains.
One of the women who stopped wearing a veil in 2022 and has now covered her hair again is Melika, a 39-year-old housewife from Tehran.
“I stopped using the hijab as a form of solidarity with the young women who have paid very dearly for the fact of removing the veil,” he tells EFE.
“But after seeing the violent arrests of girls in the streets with the return of the police of morale, I began to use it in places where I know there are police vans,” he continues.
After two years without buying a veil, Melika bought one a few days ago: “It makes me feel bad to spend the money on something I don’t like and that they are forcibly imposing on me.”
Iran is now waiting for President-elect Masud Pezeshkian to take office at the end of the month and one of the great doubts is whether he will relax the veil policy, as he hinted in the electoral campaign.
“I don’t think he will, he has no power to do it,” a newly licensed psychologist tells EFE who doubts that the new reformist president will bring changes, a widespread opinion among young Iranians.
If so, the veil seller Mahshid will continue to do well.
International
China shows at the UN its “condemnation” of Israel for the “violation of Iran’s sovereignty”
The Chinese ambassador to the United Nations, Fu Cong, showed the “condemnation” of his country against the “violation of the sovereignty, security and territorial integrity of Iran” after the air attack launched by Israel against multiple targets in that country, the official newspaper Diario del Pueblo reports this Saturday.
That media echoes Fu’s speech to the UN Security Council on Friday, in which he demanded that Israel “immediately stop all its military actions.”
“China (…) opposes the expansion of conflicts, and is deeply concerned about the serious consequences that may arise from Israel’s actions. The intensification of regional tensions does not interest any of the parties involved,” said the Chinese emissary.
Beijing called on Tel Aviv and Tehran to “resolve their disputes through political and diplomatic means, and maintain peace and stability at the regional level jointly.”
In Fu’s view, the Israeli attack will have a “negative impact” on the negotiations on Iran’s nuclear program: “China has always been committed to the peaceful resolution of the Iranian nuclear issue through dialogue and consultations, and opposes the use of force, illegal unilateral sanctions and armed attacks on peaceful nuclear facilities.”
This Friday, China had already expressed its willingness to “play a constructive role” to curb the escalation of tensions and facilitate conciliation, in line with its traditional position of active neutrality in the region’s conflicts.
The Israeli attack, which according to Tehran caused dozens of deaths, including senior military commanders and at least six nuclear scientists, targeted key facilities such as the uranium enrichment plant in Natanz. Numerous civilian casualties were also reported.
Israel justified the offensive by claiming that the Iranian regime is secretly developing a program to manufacture nuclear weapons.
For his part, Iran’s supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, promised a “severe response” and assured that the attack would reveal the “evil nature” of Israel.
UN Secretary-General António Guterres also expressed concern about the bombing, at a time when Iran and the US The United States is holding talks about the Iranian nuclear program.
International
Donald Trump’s government pauses its program of indiscriminate raides against migrants
The government of US President Donald Trump has decided to pause its campaign of discretionary roundings against migrants in certain areas due to its apparent concern about the growing unpopularity of these methods, according to The New York Times newspaper on Friday.
According to an email to which the newspaper has had access and the confirmation of US officials, the Executive has ordered the Immigration and Customs Control Service (ICE) to pause the beatings that affect the agricultural industry and the hospitality industry.
The spokeswoman for the Department of Homeland Security, Tricia McLaughlin, confirmed in a statement that “the president’s instructions” will be obeyed and the portfolio will also continue to “work to get the worst illegal foreign criminals out of the streets of the United States.”
The decision points out that this campaign of discretionary arrests to try to deport large-scale immigrants is harming industries and electoral constituencies whose support Trump wants to retain for next year’s legislative elections.
The new instructions were transmitted to ICE in an email sent last Thursday asking that “all investigations/law enforcement operations be suspended in work centers in the agricultural sector (including aquaculture and meat packing plants), restaurants and hotels.”
These new guidelines come in turn after more than a week of intense protests in Los Angeles against this immigration policy and that Trump himself admitted that the raids seem to be affecting the agricultural sector, which in states like California, where beatings have intensified, depend almost exclusively on immigrant labor.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has implemented an aggressive policy of hard hand against immigration and as a sample of his Cabinet officials recently held a meeting with the ICE leadership to order them to carry out 3,000 arrests a day, a mandate that seems to be behind the intensification of the raids.
International
Trump says he knew “everything” about the attack on Iran and assures that the dialogue remains open
US President Donald Trump said on Friday that Washington “known everything” about the Israeli attack on Iran and that the dialogue on Tehran’s nuclear program “is not dead.”
“We knew everything and I tried to avoid Iran all this humiliation and death. I tried hard to avoid it because I would have loved to see an agreement,” Trump said in an interview with Reuters.
The US president insisted on what he wrote today about the attack on social networks, where he said he gave an ultimatum of 60 days to Tehran to reach an agreement.
“We knew practically everything. We knew enough to give Iran 60 days to reach an agreement and today it is already 61 days,” he explained in the interview, in which he said he did not know what the current situation of the Iranian nuclear program is after the attack launched by Israel, which also ended the lives of key military leaders of the Persian country.
Regarding the dialogue between the US and Iran about the nuclear program of the ayatollahs, Trump assured that “he is not dead”, that “an agreement is still possible” and also recalled that on Sunday a sixth round of dialogue is scheduled in Muscat (Oman) that they consider is now in the air.
“We have a meeting with them on Sunday. Now, I’m not sure if that meeting will take place, but we have a meeting with them on Sunday,” he said.
The United States and Iran have held five rounds of talks on the Iranian nuclear program since April, with Washington demanding that Tehran discard its capabilities both to manufacture an atomic bomb and to enrich uranium, something that the ayatollahs considered unacceptable.
Both Israel and Trump himself had warned of possible preventive attacks on the Persian country due to this refusal by Iran.
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